The Penalty Part 41

Lichtenstein laughed. "Plenty of worse girls," he said, "receive excellent characters daily. And now I suppose I ought to put distance between this house and myself."

Barbara lifted her eyebrows. "Why?"

"Why? She's probably working the telephone now."

"I know," said Barbara, "but if you pretend to go, and then come back, this would be the last home in the world that Blizzard would suspect you of hiding in. Marion will tell him her story. And he certainly won't look for you here."

Lichtenstein's face was wreathed in smiles, "So be it," he said, "and I shall sit at your feet to learn."

"Can you drive a car?" asked Barbara.

"What kind of a car?"

"A Stoughton? But if you can drive any kind you can drive a Stoughton.

We'll lend you a car and you shall take a long run and come back when it's dark. If you start at once, Marion will know of it. Meanwhile I'll tell my father all about everything. But first of all I'm dying with curiosity to know what you wrote on that card. That's all I can say. Of course if I'm not to be told--"

Had she asked for his dearest secret Lichtenstein could not have refused it, and he told her what he had written on the card.

"But why," said Barbara, "if you have a criminal, so to speak, where you want him--why let him be free to make more mischief? I ask merely for information."

"If he were punished for an ordinary crime," said Lichtenstein, "justice would be cheated. But if we can really get him where we want him, why, not only crime will be tried and found guilty, but the whole fabric of the police--yes, and the administration of the law. Therefore," and his voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going to lend me a car--"

XLI

Wilmot Allen was surprised and annoyed at being called back to New York by his employer. He had not "gotten over" Barbara in the least, but the great West had entered his blood. Thanks to financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in the forest soil,

He had grown in body and mind. Wall Street, that had seemed so broad and important to him, now seemed narrow and insignificant. It was better for a man, a good horse between his knees, to find out what lay beyond the Ridges than whether steel was going up or down. He looked back upon his past life, not, it is true, with contempt and loathing, but with amused tolerance, as a man wise and reliable looks back upon the pranks of his boyhood.

He loved Barbara with all his heart, but no longer with the feeling that the loss of her would put an end to all the possibilities of life.

Indeed he was coolly resolved in the event of her marrying somebody else to marry somebody else himself. The thought of children and a home had grown very dear to him. In short, he had a.s.similated a characteristic of the great unsettled West, where the ratio of the male of the species to the female is often as great as ten to one.

But if the year did not cure him of Barbara he would get her if he could.

To the main line was a day's journey over a single-track road abounding in undeveloped way stations, at which an insatiable locomotive was forever stopping to drink. At one of these stations a young man taller and broader even than Wilmot himself, and like him bearded and brown as autumn leaves, boarded the train laboriously and came down the aisle occasionally catching at the backs of seats for support.

A second look a.s.sured Wilmot that the stranger was not drunk, but sick or hurt, and he was wondering whether or not to offer him a.s.sistance, when the stranger suddenly stopped and smiled, steadied himself with one hand, and held out the other.

"I heard that you would be on this train," he said simply, "so I managed to catch it, too. May I sit with you?"

Wondering, Wilmot made room for the stranger and waited developments.

But as these were not at once forthcoming he felt that he must break a silence which seemed awkward to him. And he turned his head and saw that the man had fainted.

A request for whiskey addressed to a car containing a dozen men accustomed to wrest metals from the earth was not in vain. Wilmot chose the nearest of twelve outstretched flasks, and was obliged to refuse a thirteenth in the kindly hand of the conductor.

"Fed better?"

"Thanks, I'm all right."

The twelve miners withdrew tactfully to their seats.

"Sure?"

"Sure. Just let me sample that brand again. Good. Now if you don't mind I'll say what I came to say."

"But aren't you hurt--isn't there something to do?"

"I've _been_ hurt. I'm just weak. Don't think about it. But you're Mr.

Wilmot Allen all right, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"It's hard to be sure of a man you never knew and who's grown a beard since you saw him last."

"I a.s.sure you," Wilmot smiled, "that I'm only waiting to reach a first-cla.s.s barber-shop."

"Perhaps you will change your mind."

"Why should I?"

"You know a man named O'Hagan?"

Wilmot nodded.

"I had a talk with him up in the mountains yesterday. He spoke truth for once. You know a man in New York--Blizzard?"

"He's been a good friend to me."

"Why?" asked the stranger.

"I don't know. I've asked myself that question a thousand times."

"He's helped you with your debts in return for your services in teaching a lot of foreigners to shoot straight?"

Wilmot frowned.

"Did it ever occur to you that he could have obtained half a dozen teachers for a tenth of the money?"

"That _has_ occurred to me," said Wilmot stiffly.

"Obviously then he has some ulterior use for you."

"Very possibly."

"Please don't take offence. There are reasons why you shouldn't. I am coming to them. Remember, O'Hagan talked to me, and talked truth.